Indianapolis: Dodge teams race quotes

KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)
I was trying to get in a battle with all those guys for position,
sixth, seventh, eighth right in there. I had to block Edwards and come
back to Stewart. Trying to pass Stewart I got loose.

KASEY KAHNE (No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)

I was trying to get in a battle with all those guys for position,
sixth, seventh, eighth right in there. I had to block Edwards and come
back to Stewart. Trying to pass Stewart I got loose. Stewart got right
down on me and I got loose and then I just tried staying off Tony I guess
and ran into the wall. It hurt. It still hurts, but that's racing.
I can't believe it happened. We battled that car, battled the
tires, battled everything all day trying to get a top 10 and didn't
make it back.

"I haven't seen the points, but I imagine it puts us in it
pretty deep. We've been battling. We've been trying hard, but
we haven't had the best of breaks in probably the last two months.
We still have plenty of time to get in it.

"It's normal. It's been this way the past two months.
We're good in practice. We have a chance to win every race after
practice and you get in the race and you can't do anything.
That's just the way our cars have been lately. We haven't
figured it out. Hopefully we do here soon.

"It makes you mad. You want to race good. Going into the race you
think you have a shot to win the Allstate 400. You battle as hard as you
can for 15th and at the end we start going forward. It takes us all day
to figure it out and it's just kind of a pain to race like that.
It's the same stuff. I just think everybody else got better."

***

KURT BUSCH (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger)

"We were listed as 10th at the end, but man we had to struggle
today. The backup car gave us some signs of hope, but it was real tight
at times and loose at others. We just couldn't quite nail it down.
Jimmie has been great every year. He's a solid guy. We were fast at
times today, especially early on but when the track got rubbered in our
car got tight and we had to hang on. It was a good finish, but we really
need to crack the top five if we want to make this Chase easier on
ourselves. Tenth is good and we'll take it, especially with a
backup car, but on pit road is where we made up most of our spots.
We've just got to make the car a little better. A top 10 was all we
had in mind today. About halfway we were pleased with the progress we had
made. We even had to go back to the back again after a left front was
loose. We had a hard-fought day. Indy challenges you in so many ways.
It's good to have The Captain on my side and we finished 10th. We
got the most points out of today possible, more than we deserved
actually, but a top 10 feels good."

***

SCOTT RIGGS (No. 10 Stanley Tools/Valvoline Dodge Charger)

"We were better than 21st After being tight center for the first
half of the race, we made some changes that freed us up and we were the
fastest car on the track. We should have had a Top 10 finish, but the
last caution allowed for several different pit strategies and in
hindsight we should have gone with two tires. Four tires put us
restarting 20th. We had to check up because the 18 car spun in front of
us on the last restart, and we lost another five spots. Track position is
important, and it was tough to recover."

***

RYAN NEWMAN (No. 12 Alltel Dodge Charger)

"It wasn't the car I wanted to have. It seemed like we were
missing a little bit with the pressures, getting going. We were good at
the end of a run, but we just never could get going. That hurt us on that
last restart. We didn't know what would happen (by staying out on
last caution) because nobody had tried it in this race to see what it
would be like, but we definitely made the most of it."

***

DAVID STREMME (No. 40 Coors Light Dodge Charger)

"All in all I'd say we had a pretty decent weekend at The
Brickyard. We qualified 24th and finished 18th and this is my first race
here. That wasn't our best finish of the season, but it might have
been our biggest payday. We've had some decent runs since Daytona
in July and hopefully we'll keep getting better as the second half
of the season goes along. I can't wait to get back to some of these
tracks and see how we stack up the second time around."